


Dancing Through Discord

by TheLimeGreenMachine



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Descent into Madness, Dialogue Light, F/M, Gore, Post-Canon, SDR2 Spoilers, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Relationships, post game sdr2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3242414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLimeGreenMachine/pseuds/TheLimeGreenMachine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Souda does leave the first island, however, he often runs into Sonia. She always gives him a polite smile, asks him how he's doing, and then they're on their own way. He's the only one that barely comes to breakfast anymore, instead settling on sleeping late and staying awake until the wee hours of the morning, when the ocean waves are shimmering with crests of reflected moonlight. He likes it better that way. </p><p>Post SDR2: Souda and Sonia learn to live in the world that they have awoken in. It's hard to adapt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Through Discord

**Author's Note:**

> short little ficlet I wrote on my phone!! sorry i posted this before finishing my sondam but i needed a bit of a break, and i'd had this idea in my head for a while. i'll go back and do some editing later. mostly this was a very interesting character study!!
> 
> EDIT: in a world where dr3 never happens

Souda gets bored a lot, recently.

He finds himself wandering around the island, without really much to do at all. Hinata is always busy, either researching the event that they all want to forget or helping attend to the comatose. Akane likes to distract herself by running laps around the islands several times a day, only stopping if somebody needs her. Kuzuryuu goes missing a lot, for some reason - he shows up to eat breakfast in the morning, and shows up to eat dinner at night, but no one sees him in between. It is a month after they escaped the island life of mutual killing, and no one has woken up.

When he has nothing to do (which happens frequently as of late), he tinkers. The airport on the first island is a goldmine of technology now that their engines are back. It's wonderfully distracting to just pull some parts out of a smaller plane and mess with them until he feels hungry enough to get lunch. He's taken to setting up his own refuge there in the airport, making it his own workshop. He doesn't leave the first island much anymore.

When Souda does leave the first island, however, he often runs into Sonia. She always gives him a polite smile, asks him how he's doing, and then they're in their own way. He's the only one that barely comes to breakfast anymore, instead settling on sleeping late and staying awake until the wee hours of the morning, when the ocean waves are shimmering with crests of reflected moonlight. He likes it better that way.

Usually Souda works alone, but one afternoon, after a long day of putting back together the engine he took from the military base, Sonia stops in. She looks exhausted, light bags circling her pretty green eyes. But she smiles anyways, as bright as she can manage, and says she has a favor to ask him. She wants to be of more use around the island, she says - her days are often spent in the library, reading to calm her troubled mind. She asks for Souda's help, and in that one moment, he feels like a man again, like they are back in the virtual reality, before the killings began, without a care in the world.

Sonia wants to learn how to do what Souda does. He explains, with a chuckle, that he's the best in the business (or whatever business is left. they don't know for sure), and she came to the right person. They leave together that evening, just after midnight, laughing and sweating and hands covered in grease and oil.

They quickly fall into a routine, him waking up around eleven and arriving at the airport only to find she's already there. His heart always pounds when she looks at him, when she swings around to look at him from whatever she's working on that day, her long braided hair falling over her shoulder. She's taken to braiding her hair in the mornings so it doesn't get in the way of her work. They work somewhat silently for a couple of hours, stop for lunch around five, come back and finish around one a.m. Sonia is surprisingly adept with her hands, taking quickly to the mechanical trade and enjoying every minute. Her focus is unmatched; she takes apart devices with the precision of handling fine china, elegantly and carefully. Souda often goes on autopilot, giving him more room to think, less time for distraction. It isn't productive, because all they're doing is taking the same things apart and putting them together again. But it's distracting.

Sometimes, if they're lucky, the boat comes back and brings them new supplies. With new supplies often comes new blueprints, a new toy that they can spend days together working on. The first one they get is handed to them by a blue-eyed brown skinned girl from the future foundation, laughing as she hands it to them. She doesn't understand a word of it, she says. That's Togami's department.

For a while, Souda and Sonia are so close, speaking silently with tools clanking against metal or hitting the ground. She admits one night that she's still scared, worrying if and when the Future Foundation will find Jabberwock Island. Before she started working with him, she explains with near tears in her eyes, she had night terrors. But the feeling of lying in her bed after a long day of learning, of rebuilding herself and expanding her knowledge, helps lull her to sleep. And she thanks him.

(He thinks he's falling in love with her all over again, and he's so pissed about that.)

Their dynamic changes when Naegi visits the island without any warning. It's a surprise, and Souda knows it's serious, because Naegi never shows up unless it's serious. He gathers everybody at the hotel, gets them out of their cottages around eight a.m., hours before Souda's brain is awake enough to process. They all sit around a table in the center of the breakfast lounge, Naegi at the head with files laid out all around him. For the last month, he says, their group within the Future Foundation (meaning him, Togami, Kirigiri, and the other nameless three) have been working on digging up information about their pasts: their roles in cultivating despair, in the biggest, most awful, most tragic event in human history. They all perk up, sitting straighter in their chairs, even Akane. He passes out a folder to all of them, labeled with their talents instead of their names.

Souda picks his up, hands shaking, but decides almost right away that he isn't going to look at it for a long time. The others open their folders immediately, a dreadful silence spreading throughout the room. Naegi starts talking again, but Souda is really the only one who is listening at this point. He tells them about their families, and that's when Sonia perks up, immediately catching Naegi's eye.

Naegi says that he can prepare a trip for one of them, but only one, because any more would get them noticed by the Future Foundation. Sonia stands, grasping her Manila folder like a lifeline, and speaks, tone authoritative, "I must go."

The room falls silent, and everyone knows that when Sonia uses that voice, she is in command. Souda trembles, imagining Sonia getting caught, getting killed, and her death getting traced back to the island. "S-Sonia," he stutters, throat dry and raspy, "you can't go...! It's too da-"

But she turns and looks at him, almost glaring, yet the rims of her eyes are wet. She looks back to Naegi, and he nods at her, all professional as usual, and says that he will return on the boat in a week and take her to her home country.

She comes back to the airport the next day, where he's working with a television taken from Electric Avenue. For a while neither of them speak, instead settling into stilence. For once, it's awkward and long, each second of silence punctuated by a clanking of metal. It, for once, hurts Souda's ears, until finally, an hour in, Sonia apologizes for being rude the day before. They're each forgiven, and they leave for lunch a half hour early. But Sonia remains distracted for the rest of the day.

The week continues on smoothly, the routine set almost in stone. Then, on the day before Naegi returns on the boat to pick Sonia up, she suggests a change in pace. She wants to visit the building on the center island where the remaining ten students lay. Though Souda hates going to that building, she seems so adamant. He agrees, just for her. The walk is long.

When they walk into the building, a humming noise fills the atmosphere. From the lobby, they can see the neon aquamarine glow in the room behind the receptionist desk. Souda hasn't been in this building since he woke up, disoriented and covered in a sheen of sweat. The virtual reality machine is set up in the open space behind the wall separating the lobby and the main hall. Sonia heads inside and Souda follows her, hesitant to enter again. Entering means being reminded of everything that happened, reminded of those people who cultivated despair for the world to experience, including himself. Sonia, too, for that matter.

Sonia passes the wall, stepping into the darkness of the room. From where he stands, Souda can see some of the equipment that drapes the walls, glowing like fluorescent blue vines. For a moment he wonders if perhaps someone is showing signs of waking up, but shakes it off. No one has shown any signs. He takes a deep breath and walks in, too.

A sigh of relief and disappointment in the same breath. All of the pods are still glowing, their electricity crackling in the air. Five of the pods are empty, however: one for each survivor of the Neo World Program. Sonia stands next to him, evening her breathing out, and then she begins to make her rounds and look at each and every pod. Souda, following her example, does too, heading opposite her direction in the circle of pods.

He looks down at the first pod he comes to, Tsumiki's pod. She looks horrible, just like they all did when they first awoke. Her hair is thin and choppier than when they were in the simulation, as if she hacked random sections off with a dull pair of scissors. She's pale, with thin arms and a bony, almost gaunt face. There's a patch of dark blood right on the front of her nurses apron, where she most likely mutilated herself for Junko. Her eyelashes flutter, and just for a brief moment Souda thinks he's witnessing a miracle, their first miracle, but her breathing stabilizes and she returns to normal. He moves on before anything else can happen.

Peko's pod. The first thing he notices is how spotless it is. There's a bucket of water with a rag sitting next to her pod, and he wonders who could have possibly done that. Peko's braids are loose, strands of hair flying out of their ties and sticking up in random directions. Dozens of scars cover what is visible of her skin: her neck, her hands, one or two on her cheek. Her hose are ripped in numerous places, revealing the pale and unhealthy skin beneath. She makes no sign of movement. He continues.

Seeing his own empty pod is what makes him shudder. There are imprints in the cushions from where he laid, stray hair here and there colored bright pink. He doesn't linger too long there.

Nidai. Ibuki. Koizumi. All of them look ragged and exhausted, all of the fullness and youth gone from their sleeping faces. When he observes everyone, someone might twitch a facial muscle slightly, or their eyes might move behind their lids for a split second. But no one ever wakes up (and after almost two months of being here, on these six islands where passing another gets rarer by the day, he supposes that no one will ever wake up).

Souda stops next to Sonia, both observing different pods. His is Komaeda's. He frowns deeply, brows furrowing when he sees him. Komaeda, the crafty bastard who Souda was so sure would survive, just because he was so spontaneously dangerous and unpredictable. But here he lies, still as ever, breathing shallowly through a tube.

Komaeda looks twice as worse as every one of them combined. His hair is matted in clumps, stark white and thinning in every direction. Wads of hair stick to the pillow beneath him, gathering around his head. His face is hollow, and damn, the kid was a stick before, but he just looks so brittle that Souda almost feels bad for him (almost, but not quite). His pod is equally as polished as Peko's, the neon circuitry of the room reflecting off of it and onto Komaeda's sleeping face. He growls, moving over to where Sonia stands. He doesn't want to look at Komaeda anymore.

But then he comes face to face with Gundam's pod, and wants to leave immediately. A tension runs up his spine, locking him in his place, and with a lump in his throat, he solemnly realizes why Sonia wanted to come before she returned to Novoselic for two weeks. But he stays put, and looks over Gundam.

Gundam doesn't look as malnourished as everyone else, but he looks raggedy. His hair is getting shaggy and his bangs have grown out, flopping down over his face in grey and black strips. His scar tattoo scrunches up the skin of his left eye, and when Souda looks closer, he realizes there is an actual scar across his left eye, over the tattoo. He's grown taller, as well; the top of his head almost touches the end of the pod. And he, too, remains asleep, no matter how long the two of them stare.

He risks taking a look at Sonia, and when he does, his heart swells but falls deep into his chest at the same time. She looks devastated, so crushed, past the point of no return. Tears brim in her eyes, spilling over and dropping onto the shield of his pod. She cries.

It would be insensitive to leave her like this, he thinks, and carefully, shaking all the way, he wraps a comforting arm around her shoulder. She leans into the touch, and the next moment she's hugging him, crushing him in her arms, sobbing furiously. But then, she calms, slowly. And she realizes that she's taller than him, not the other way around. With that, she gasps and slips out of his grip, and stumbles back, balancing on Gundam's pod. She looks down at him, but her face twists into sadness again, and she runs off.

Souda doesn't go to see her off.

* * *

Sonia's trip lasts two weeks, and Souda is incredibly bored while she's gone. He considers the idea of going into her cabin more than once, but pushes the idea away, along with any other thoughts of her. But pushing away thoughts of her is so hard, because he always sees her cabin when he goes to breakfast, always sees her pile of work in the airport. It sits and collects dust the entire week she's gone. He doesn't bother touching it.

Souda realizes just how reattached he's gotten to her now that they're awake. In the virtual reality, he devised schemes to win her affection, bringing Hinata along to be his wingman. He would try to walk with her, to be her escort to and from breakfast, but she would always beat him there. She's a much earlier riser than he'll ever be.

While Sonia is gone, Souda tries to find Hinata. But Hinata is so random with where he is on the islands, it takes Souda at least an hour to find him at times. And when he does find Hinata, the latter isn't always thrilled to see him. But Souda ignores it, sticks around while Hinata goes about his business. Follows him when he goes to polish the pods and check their vitals. Goes with him to the library and helps him find the documents he needs for his research. Eats dinner with him. Then they part for the day.

In the midst of his boredom he sometimes hangs around the comatose students. They make for terrible company, but he takes to looking at the circuitry of their vital sign machines, and decides to install an alarm system all over the islands in case they ever wake up. Should their vitals spike the alarms everywhere will go off and everyone will know. Souda installed them in every cottage, in the hotel, and one at every other location on every island.

Once, when Hinata is cleaning one of the empty pods, he brings up Nanami. Souda goes silent, unsure of how to respond; Nanami has been an off-limits topic between the five survivors. Hinata says that he wishes there were sixteen pods, it would make him feel a bit better, but he knows it's illogical. He says he misses her, and Souda agrees, thinking back to her round, almost childish face. Every time he tries to picture her, it gets harder.

So the next day, after waking up and forcing down breakfast, he heads over to the third island to visit Electric Avenue. He picks up a shopping cart on the way, and when he arrives, he stockpiles anything he thinks he can use. Scrap metal, tools, machinery, computer chips, anything. He heads back to the airport, shopping cart overflowing with everything he needs. And he gets to work.

He's never built anything so complex before. Sure, Souda remembers building Mini Nidai after his murder, but he was only a toy, not the real thing. But he misses Nanami, and he knows everyone else does, too, so he'll try. And if it doesn't work, he can at least say he tried. He tries to start, but realizes he has no idea how to build a full sized robot mimicking a human, so on his break for lunch, he rushes over to the library and grabs some anatomy books. He lays them out over a table when he gets back to the airport, and resumes his work.

The next few nights are sleepless. Sometimes, he'll delve so far into his work that he spends all evening working on just one organ, or one circuitboard, and when he looks up the sun is just peeking over the waves and the birds are emerging from their nests and the world is waking up. Other times, he resolved that he'll eat a solid dinner and turn in early, but the moment he lies down his mind races, as if he is standing in the middle of a highway while cars race past left and right.

She's coming along, slowly, but he's only building the base of the robot for now. Turning this robot into Nanami is another story, one that he's nervous to deal with. Souda isn't sure it's entirely possible, but he said he'd try. He's not sure, either, how he's going to make it look like Nanami.

Out of all the nights he works on her, he spends the most time building the brain. It's the most agonizing part, because he has to figure out how to mix the human brain with the main motherboard of a computer system. And he doesn't even know where to begin, because there's so much to consider, so around three in the morning, he calls Kirigiri.

Kirigiri promised she would almost always be available if they needed her, so it's a relief when she picks up on the second ring. "Hey, uh...is there any chance that the Future Foundation has a computer programmer lyin' around? Because I'm workin' on a project and could really use some help here..."

There's a pause on the other end of the line, seeming like forever. It's unnerving. Kirigiri isn't one to stall. "I knew of one...there was a programmer, once, but he was murdered during the school killings at Hope's Peak." She pauses again. "His program is the one that created our mole, Chiaki Nanami."

And Souda's voice grows small, weak, and he thanks her and hangs up. Defeat curls into his mouth from his stomach, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. He sets what he has of the brain down onto the table, and cries so hard out of frustration that he collapses of exhaustion in the middle of the airport.

* * *

After some careful consideration, Souda overcame his feelings of angst against Sonia, and went to the dock to greet her after her two weeks are finally over. She and Naegi didn't send any warning, so he and Hinata sit down on the dock for an hour every morning until one morning, they spot a boat coming over the water, it's horn honking twice in quick succession, the signal for a Future Foundation ship.

Sonia comes off the boat bouncing, and looking more full of life than ever. His breath catches when he sees her, and she looks so wonderful and alive, and all of his feelings come rushing back immediately. Her hair swirls in the salty ocean wind, and she hugs both Souda and Hinata happily. Souda hugs her back, wrapping his arms around her torso. She's lost weight, he realizes suddenly. But her laugh fills his ears and its musical and beautiful and he's swept away again.

She brought so many things from her own country, it takes Souda and Hinata three trips each just to get all of her bags back to her cottage. On the way back, she sees Akane running her usual laps and hugs her, and waves to Kuzuryuu from afar. When she lifts her arm to wave, her sleeve slips up to her shoulder, and for a moment - just a moment - Souda sees a long, angry red line traveling from the middle of her upper arm to her shoulder, where it disappears back under the fabric. It almost looks like a scar, yet it was too deliberately placed to be accidental, and the line was too even to have been done by someone else. She tugs her sleeve down over the line before anyone else notices.

When the three of them arrive back at Sonia's cottage at the last trip, all of her bags rested on her bed, Souda asks if Sonia wants to come work on some things in the shop with him. She declines politely, insisting she has to unpack. When he leaves with Hinata, he takes a glimpse at her window, where she begins to unpack, moving a bit slower than before. He starts to stop to see what she's unpacking, but Hinata tells him that looking inside someone else's house is rude. He lets it be, and goes to work on Nanami for the rest of the day.

Souda and Sonia don't really see each other as much for a while. They all still eat dinner together in the evenings, not really talking much but glad to be in each other's company. She stops by the airport now and then, but her visits are so random that he's never ready for her. She sees his latest project often, but, to his surprise, has not once questioned what it is. He finally breaks down and tells her one evening, and her reaction is surprising.

It happens while he's working on her brain again, as he often finds himself doing now that everything else is more or less finished in terms of circuitry. Souda blurts it out, that he misses Nanami, and he knows everyone else does too. Sonia seems surprisingly calm, praising him, and requests to help him work on it. He accepts gladly, hoping that it will bring them to be as close as they were before her trip.

To say the next week or two is hectic would be an understatement. He wakes up at his normal time, eats breakfast, and heads to the airport. But whether or not Sonia is already there is a gamble. Her visits are more frequent but still sporadic and hard to predict. When she does show up, however, she is eager, bouncing with energy, but the dark circles under her eyes get darker. She refuses to do her own work and wants to help with his, so oftentimes he'll give her an aesthetic part to work on, like molding and welding the outside skin for when everything else is done. Sometimes, Souda needs information, so he asks her to go to the library for him, promises they'll get lunch afterwards. She'll come back with the book he needs, or twice as many books as he requested but none of them related to what he asked for, or she doesn't come back at all.

Hinata stops by once in a while, too, but only when Sonia is there. Souda wonders if something is going on between them, but they hardly talk, other than polite chatter that Sonia likes to keep up with them. Hinata likes watching Souda build Nanami, asking questions now and then. Everyone on Jabberwock Island knows about the project, including Naegi and Kirigiri. The five survivors are especially nervous for the projects completion, considering that Souda is attempting to reconstruct her personality. Naegi promised to try and use Alter Ego to download Nanami's AI into the system, but tells him the process will be shaky. Luckily, that step won't be for a long while.

When he and Sonia eat lunch together (which is happening less and less often, considering her frequent disappearances), she has taken to staying quiet. She eats less and less, now and then just settling for half of an apple or a salad comprised of only lettuce. She always says that she misses Hanamura. He doesn't.

She's gotten increasingly energetic, but not in the way that she was in the Neo World Program. Instead of a go-getting ready for the world attitude, she seems more high strung, almost hyperactive. When she hands him a book one day, he gets a glimpse of her hands; her nails are chewed raw, down to the stub, and there's dried blood caked in her cuticles. There are scabs on her knuckles, some of them red and wet, as if she wouldn't let them heal and scar over. And this is when he truly begins to worry about her.

Sonia is only back for three weeks when her schedule suddenly flips. Souda heads to his workshop at normal time, but she isn't there. He isn't surprised, at first: it's probably another one of her absentee days. But she comes by around seven in the evening, ready to work, energetic as usual. Souda asks her if she knows that the sun is getting ready to set, and she laughs, explaining she thought it was dawn. She apologizes for the mistake and begins carefully welding some metal together. The remainder of the evening is silent, and he makes sure to walk her back to her cottage.

That night, Souda is left with a feeling of unease after he drops Sonia off at her cottage. He keeps thinking about Sonia's laugh; it was airy, but something about it sounded forced, high-strung. The longer he thinks about it the more it unnerves him, so he tries to get some rest.

But he tosses and turns and thinks about that laugh until he can't take it anymore. Without a second thought, he springs out of bed, heading out into the cool midnight air and walking over to Sonia's cottage. He's about to knock when he glimpses the yellow light behind her flowing curtains.

When he slides up to the window, presses his ear against it, he can hear her inside. And there's a faint grey silhouette against the curtain: her frame, hunched over, holding something close to her chest. And Souda here's her weeping, crying with such intensity but gasping for breath so that she isn't heard. The curtains flutter, for just a brief enough moment that he can see a flood of tears streaking her face.

He leaves right after that. He thought talking to Sonia would give him some peace of mind, but after seeing that, he's awake for the rest of the night.

* * *

Sonia stops coming after that. Souda worries that she saw him, but whenever they do pass each other she still smiles cheerfully.

Nanami is coming along; her lower half is done, with her head sitting squarely on a display with the top of the cranium open so the brain is available to work on. She's coming along smoothly when Hinata walks into the airport, looking unsure of what he's doing. Before Souda has time to greet him, Hinata asks him if he's seen Sonia.

His stomach drops, and he replies no, not since lunch yesterday. Hinata sighs and says he found something outside her cottage, and he hands him a ripped shred of paper. It looks like an official document, with her name spelled across the top in typewriter print. There's information below that, with her date of birth and current location. There's a date for when the paper was filled out, but the year is missing, getting cut off where the paper is ripped. Souda spots several bullet points, listing things like "major depressive episodes", "insomnia", "night terrors", "type two bipolar disorder", and others. He doesn't know how long the list is, because it cuts off before its done. The edges of the paper are dusty, dirty, and it doesn't click until he sees the Future Foundation symbol in the corner of the page.

His throat is suddenly dry, and he looks up at Hinata. They share the same expression, one of simultaneous terror and confusion. Hinata says he thinks it's from before they entered the virtual reality, and Souda's heart palpitates in his ears.

"...Hey," he finally says, voice low, "ever since Sonia got back from Novoselic, she's kind of been acting like this...right?"

And Souda agrees, swallowing roughly. He recalls seeing Sonia sob behind locked doors a while back, but she still put on the same smile the next time he saw her. He remembers her fingernails, chewed to bloody stubs.

They don't have much to say after that. Souda tries to fix up some wires in Nanami's brain, but the sour taste in his mouth overrides any desire to work anymore. He and Hinata leave together, walking in silence back to their respective cottages.

The door clicks shut, and Souda enters his eerily quiet cabin. He turns on the lights and blares some music, knowing well that he shouldn't even bother sleeping tonight. Sleepless nights are becoming more frequent lately. He knows well that nobody is going to bother telling him to turn the music down, because they're all going to be having sleepless nights, too. He sits on the edge of his bed, and out of impulse, pulls the dusty Manila folder out from under his mattress.

He's avoided looking at it for almost a month, now. He wonders what's in his folder compared to everyone else's. It smells of mothballs and dust, as if it were a secret the Future Foundation wanted kept far away. He swallows tightly. Naegi may have handed them all out, but Togami put them together. And in Souda's experience, Togami is far from subtle when it comes to these things.

Slowly, he opens the folder.

There's a picture of him on the top of the papers, and he looks horrible. His hair is matted with blood. He's restrained in the picture, wrapped in a straight jacket, snarling with his pointed teeth bared. Behind that picture is a paper, similar to the ripped bit of Sonia's, with the Future Foundation insignia in the corner. He sees his name - Kazuichi Souda - and below that is a bullet-point list, including "social anxiety disorder", "kleptomania", "borderline personality disorder", "violent anger issues", and a few others.

In bold print, below the list, reads "must be restrained at all times". Souda exhales shakily, gripping the paper a bit tighter. The date the paper was filled out is July of this year: three months ago. As he looks deeper into the file, he sees pictures of people he knows, so many people: his father with gouged out eyes falling from their sockets, a wrench jammed into his cranium; his first school bully - or at least what was left of him - stomped and smashed to death, his head splattered all over the blacktop, bloody footprints leading to and from the body, brains spilling onto the ground and mixing into the dirty footprints; the first girl he convinced himself that he was in love with, mutilated and tied up by her wrists, bulbous bruises and scars covering her body and face, with her breasts exposed and jagged stab wounds in both of them. Souda gags, and he feeling nauseous. There's a post-it note on each of the pictures, describing how his fingerprints were found over every single corpse.

That's when he runs to the bathroom and throws up. After he's done, he hides the folder again and promises never to look at it.

Souda tries to keep his routine normal for the next several days. The images of those people - people he _killed_ \- light up his head at night, but even though he's barely getting any sleep, the daytime is still very much the same. He falls back into a pattern with only himself, lonely but satisfied. He sees Sonia occasionally around lunch, but other than that she twists into an enigma. The less he sees her, the more he worries and wonders.

It's about three months after Sonia returns from her trip that they finally have a proper conversation again. She doesn't stop by the airport, but intercepts him on his way to dinner. She says that staying on the first island by herself is growing incredibly boring, and she wants to know if he would go to the third island to see a movie with her.

He wants to ask what kind of movies deserted island resorts show, but doesn't, agreeing and accompanying her to the movie theatre. The movie itself is uneventful: some thriller released a couple of years back that was rereleased at the box office. Sonia seems to enjoy it enough, but Souda stays quiet throughout the whole thing. He had wanted to go out with Sonia for so long back in the Neo World Program, but not like this. On the walk back to their cottages, Sonia is bubbling with excitement while she talks about the movie. They stop where the girls and boys cabins split apart.

And then she leans up, and kisses him, slow and soft, just like he's always dreamed of. He frets that she can feel the dents in his lips from where he gnaws at them when he gets nervous, but if she can, she doesn't show it. Her lips, despite being chapped, are sweet, like the princess she is. And for that moment, he reciprocates, and it's perfect.

It's perfect until Sonia reaches up to rest her hand on his shoulder. She almost gropes around, as if feeling for something around his neck, so she settles for the collar of his jumpsuit. He begins to notice her distraction. She feels the materiel, and suddenly breaks away. Sonia stares at him, mouth agape and lips shining, and she turns and heads back to her cottage without a word.

Souda can't grasp what he did wrong, or even why she even kissed him. He feels his eyes water up as he watches her walk away. He feels his neck, looking for whatever it was that scared her away, and when he realizes why, his heart falters. He isn't wearing a scarf.

Heartbroken, Souda returns to his cottage and strips down to his boxers, curled up on his bed with the lights on, eyes wide open.

(And the worst part is although it hurt he still cares for her. He still cares despite the fact that when they kissed she closed her eyes and thought of Gundam. This new Sonia isn't the same, but his heart still flutters when he thinks of her, sometimes when he sees her. And he's so angry about that.)

After that, he starts visiting the center island again, checking on the comatose students every other day. Each visit is more or less the same: gaunt, shallow faces, but light breathing, stable vital signs, no sign of ever awakening. He always finds time to glare at Gundam in the back, and the more he looks at him, the more he hates him.

Gundam was still stealing her attention even when that bastard was unconscious for months on end. Souda often wishes he would wake up so that he could sock him right in the jaw and put him back to sleep for another long while. That _asshole_ , he thinks, sleeping so peacefully, oblivious to the outside world while Souda has to deal with not only his problems, but deal with this new world. Dammit, it gets him so _angry_. Every time he sees Gundam's pod, it's so shiny and clean that he can see his own reflection in it. He wishes he didn't know who was polishing it.

One morning, after a long evening of working on some blueprints for Nanami's design, Souda walks into the hotel dining area and spots Sonia sitting at the table nearest to the window, stacks of books crowded around her. At first he decides not to approach her, still feeling a bit burned from their abrupt kiss, but she doesn't even acknowledge him while he sits two tables to her left, and eventually curiosity gets the better of him.

Souda greets her politely, asking her how she's doing. She mumbles a low reply, not removing her eyes from the book she's reading. He asks her what she's looking at, and when she doesn't answer, he glances at the spines of them. All of them are studies of the occult. Souda shivers, looking down and seeing a small notebook to her right, covered in notes she's written down.

He lets her go after that, heading out to the fourth island for a day to get his mind off of things (unfortunately, he spots the Funhouse, and immediately his mind is brought back to Sonia and Gundam). The day is quiet, with him skipping lunch and returning to the hotel to eat around six.

She's still there, deep into her reading, looking like she hasn't moved a single inch. Souda decides not to say anything this time, considering lately every time he talks to Sonia she unnerves him more and more. And he lets it go, returning the next morning only to find she's _still_ there.

"How long have you been here?" Souda asks, concern etched into his voice. She glances up for only a second, eyes red and tired. She hasn't been keeping track of time very well lately, she says, so she doesn't know. The lights in the hotel are always on, so she needn't worry about what time it is.

And Souda is so freaked out, because this _just isn't Sonia_. Whatever is wrong with her is disturbingly wrong. He tries to think, tracing it back to when she returned from Novoselic. That's when she began to act weird.

When Souda walks out, he can feel Sonia's eyes drilling holes into the back of his head. He runs down the stairs and out of the hotel, going to find the only person he thinks he can really talk to at this point: Hinata.

Hinata is in his cottage when Souda bursts in, and he's just come out of the shower. Before Hinata can ask what the hell is wrong with him, the words come tumbling out of Souda's mouth a mile a minute. After careful deliberation and weighing of the options, they decide to go confront Sonia.

But when they get back to the hotel dining area, she's gone, books and ripped pages of notes scattered among the floor and the table.

* * *

Souda can barely take two steps outside of his own cottage without feeling like he's going to die.

Well, he felt like that in the virtual reality. Sometimes he felt amazing, like he could take on any killer. But sometimes (frankly, most of the time) he was terrified to wake up in the mornings. He wondered what it would be like if he stayed locked in his cottage all day, but with Monobear, he never wanted to find out.

He and Hinata immediately gather up Akane and Kuzuryuu and have an impromptu meeting regarding the missing princess. Kuzuryuu even calls Kirigiri, telling her that they need to get someone from the Future Foundation over there right away. She agrees that the situation was on high alert and promises to arrive with Naegi in several days.

In the meantime, they conduct searches of all of the islands. Souda gets the fifth island. God, he hates the fifth island - it only reminds him of Komaeda sending them all on a wild goose chase throughout the most dreadful, bleak cityscape they could imagine. But despite the numerous hiding places, he has no such luck in finding her. When they get back together in the evening, none of them have found Sonia. And holy hell, is Souda scared out of his mind.

Next day's search is equally conclusive. Every nook and cranny has been searched, yet none of them have seen Sonia. In the evening, when Souda trudges back to the hotel, he spots Sonia's cottage, and again, curiosity gets the better of him.

The cottages aren't individually locked like they were in the Neo World Program (they all checked each one after waking up, but finding the empty cottages of the comatose, devoid of life, was only depressing), so Souda slips right into Sonia's without any trouble.

To begin, it's a mess. Her sheets and blankets are scrambled everywhere, hanging over the bookshelves and trampled on the floor. Various books are scattered about on the floor, clothes strewn carelessly about. Propped open on the floor next to her bed are her suitcases, still half-packed from her trip. And on the very top, right on the edge of her mattress, is her Manila folder.

He picks it up immediately, swiping at it like a treasured prize. Slowly, he takes a deep breath, and opens the file.

To say he's disappointed would be an understatement. Ripped sheets of paper tumble out loosely, and the ones that aren't ripped are scribbled on in black permanent marker. Souda catches a few words here and there, but there is a small section several papers in that is highlighted: "Parent/Legal Guardian(s): Missing, presumed dead".

And then he's flipping through every legible page there is, seeing photos of massive tanks rolling in and blowing up small towns, fires starting in the horizon, pictures of a regal throne, the velvet steps leading up to it dripping with blood and spare body parts.

A small paragraph found after the photos, luckily not scribbled out, reads, "Days after the King and Queen of Novoselic disappeared, tragedies began to occur around the countryside of the usually peaceful kingdom. Princess Sonia Nevermind, daughter of the missing monarchs, opened the castle doors to the frightened citizens. She greeted them with a feast, and following said feast, slaughtered them by the hundreds."

Slowly, he sets the page down. He releases a shaky breath, glancing down at the remaining suitcases. Among the various clothing and relics that he sees, there is a large plastic baggie. Souda picks it up and shrieks upon seeing its contents, dropping it to the floor.

Inside the bag is a Monobear doll. It scares the shit out of him, and for a minute he thinks the thing is going to rip through the plastic and start laughing. In permanent marker is written on the bag: _Evidence. Found in Sonia Nevermind's bedroom drawer. Left with a note from one J.E_.

Junko. This must have been from Sonia's time of despair. He wonders if that's what's happening now, if this is what Sonia Nevermind was like in the world before. He thinks of the list he and Hinata discussed weeks earlier of those mental disorders, and realizes that the list and how Sonia was acting before her disappearance are strikingly similar.

He doesn't know what else to do. He tells everybody in the morning what he found, and that if they see Sonia, they should try and restrain her right away.

Another seven days go by without any sign of Sonia. When they all arrive in the mornings, there are usually bits of food missing: an apple, an orange, maybe a banana sometimes or a pack of strawberries. They know she's been eating, then, but it's just the question of where she's hiding. Souda is sick of searching - and everyone else is too - so he takes the first opportunity to finally return to the airport to work for the first time in about two weeks.

Souda notices something is off the moment he steps through the glass doors. It's a sense he's always had with his workspaces; if just one thing is out of place, he knows it, and it throws everything off. His usual wrench is in front of the door, and suddenly everything falls into place.

It's like the island life of mutual killing all over again, whenever they discovered a dead body. His ears begin to ring, his palms begin to sweat. It doesn't feel much different.

Nanami's frame lies scattered and crushed into pieces all over the tile floor. Her outer skin has been stripped off, tossed into a pile, and welded together into a mush of metal. Her metal skeleton is hanging limply from its supporter, wires pulled out in random places and pieces of limbs and technology dangling from the mainframe. Nanami's brain, the last thing he had been working on, has been crushed to bits. And the blueprints he'd just recently finished sat right in front of the mess, ripped, lying in a puddle of gasoline, and charred to dust.

And all Souda can do is moan, a brief outburst of agony, because months of work has been demolished and there's only one person who would do it, at this point. And she's nearby, and he knows it, because the smell of gasoline lingers strongly in the air.

Souda doesn't really know where to start looking, and at this point, he's so tired of looking. He's got a gut feeling, and decides, on a whim, to trust it. And sure enough, when he arrives in the building on the center island, there she is.

Sonia is sitting in the back of the main hall, concealed by the shadows. Souda can't see her very well from where he stands, but when he moves closer, the electronics of the room light up her face. She's sitting on a stool in front of Gundam's pod, and as Souda gets closer, he sees that she's not wearing her usual clothing, but instead her pale princess dress from Novoselic. What was once sparkling and glittering in the light is now dull, stained maroon with blood in patches, muddy and wet around the hem. The jewels that were supposed to bring the gown together are now missing, instead replaced with gaping holes with rusty frames. The crown on her head is broken, half of it hanging from her tangled, scraggly hair. Her face is the worst: dark circles under her eyes, streaks of wet mascara dripping down her face and staining her skirt. And she's smiling, bright and happy and wide.

Souda swallows roughly, looking down so he doesn't have to meet her gaze. She looks utterly debauched. For a brief moment, he's reminded of something (or someone), nagging in the back of his mind, someone who looked as raggedly godawful she looks now. And it doesn't come to him until he takes a reluctant step closer; she reminds him of the third island, when Tsumiki killed Saionji and Ibuki, when the students were infected with the despair disease. She looks wrought with despair, but still glowing with the joys of love, like Tsumiki shortly before her execution.

The Sonia that stands before him now has been infected with despair, reduced to what she was before the Neo World Program.

She giggles lightly, holding onto her skirt like its the only thing keeping her on the ground. Souda comes around to meet her, and she giggles again, lightly, melodiously. Sonia wipes away her black makeup with the back of her hand, sobs intermingling with her laughter. "Souda," she gasps, "I killed them. I murdered my citizens...my people, who I had sworn to protect..." She lifts part of her skirt up, showing him a patch of blood. "This, this one here...they believe is my mother's. And this other one..." She points to another spot, "they believe this one is my father's."

He swallows nervously again, tries to get closer, but she takes a step back, and he hears her heel clack. Sonia turns her back on him, taking slow, graceful steps back over to Gundam's pod. She draws her fingers over the smooth glowing surface, like she's stirring gentle pools of water. "I caused so much despair, and I thought that I could be rid of that..." Her expression slowly twists, and her hand tightens into a fist. "I thought that that virtual reality was the answer. How foolish...!" She slams her fist down on Gundam's pod, and the machine reading his brain activity spikes for a minute. Souda quickly moves closer.

"I couldn't ever dream to dispose of it. That despair...it's a part of me, Souda," and she looks at him, so teary eyed yet still glowing with a smile. "If I can't even protect my own people, what good am I?" She turns back to the machine, watching everyone's vitals, and he hears her say, "They're all just the same as I am." And she lunges for the wires.

Souda intercepts her before she can reach their breathing tubes. If Sonia disconnects those tubes and the wires, she's pulling the plug on all of their lives. As Sonia struggles in Souda's arms, she reaches out to a set of wires, Gundam's. She manages to wrap her finger around one and tug, but Souda hauls her back before she can do any damage. He has no idea what to do. He holds her close to his side until she gives up struggling, and then he holds her at arms length. He rushes to the front and calls all of the cottages until one picks up.

Akane answers groggily and Souda screams at her to get everyone together on the center island. He has to practically drag Sonia out of the building, and she sobs loudly the whole way.

* * *

Naegi and Kirigiri arrive together the next morning. The situation doesn't take too long to explain, and Souda is the person answering the most questions. Sonia has been taken to the hospital on the third island, confined to her own room. The four other survivors take shifts to watch her, and Souda sets up a camera in her room that they can watch live feed from the hotel.

The two from the Future Foundation have taken to staying in a spare cottage: what was once Nanami's. They, of course, notified everyone beforehand, apologized for even having to take her cottage at all. But the other survivors all agreed.

They both rush through all of the islands, walking fast and surveying every island up close, visiting Sonia every morning. They speak in hushed tones, and Souda wonders what they're going to do to her. If the Future Foundation found out not only about the former SHSL Despair being alive, but that they were not cured, they would all be killed for sure. Plus, with no one having awaken from their comas, things look particularly bleak.

Souda knows they're going to find Jabberwock Island and kill all of them. Naegi keeps insisting that it'll be fine, that Sonia will be healed and back to normal with time, and the if the students ever wake up, the project will receive immense support. But Souda is sure that none of those things will ever happen.

He starts visiting the comatose students again, but mostly, he sits in the back and watches Gundam. Goddamnit, he's so _mad_ at Gundam. He finally had a chance with Sonia, his dream girl, and they fucking _kissed_ , but it wasn't right because he wasn't Gundam. Sonia, beautiful Sonia, driven into despair because of Gundam the murderer.

Time passes without much event. And Souda, in his distraught, learns to shovel all of his angers onto the idea that everything is Gundam's fault. Nothing gets better. After Sonia has been confined for a week, Togami arrives on the island with a girl with dark braided hair and a Future Foundation suit. Togami introduces her as Touko Fukawa, and she stutters out a greeting before storming away. Souda tends to stay away from her.

He continues to visit Sonia, though nothing changes. On some days she cries, cries wordlessly for hours, but on other days she's laughing hysterically whilst struggling to breathe in between fits. He begins to visit sporadically so that he doesn't have to see her like she is. Naegi keeps promising she'll be okay, that she's talking to Kirigiri every day, but Souda stops listening to him.

But after a while, things start to look up. Souda finally visits the airport again, looks at the remains of his last project. He has no intention of starting it again, but he finds that taking some of its scraps he can create smaller, simpler things. He creates another Mini Nidai in his spare time and gives it to Akane. The smaller projects become relaxing. He cuts off all of his hair, sides of his head shaved, hair sticking up in the front, keeping it pink; he finally feels like a different person, a better person. He begins to forget about Sonia.

* * *

The alarms go off in the middle of the night.

Souda falls out of bed, sheets tangled around his legs, and he stares in awe at the alarm. He doesn't move for what seems like eternity, until Hinata barges in and tells him that quick, someone is waking up, this is real. And Souda gets up quickly, padding out of his cottage and onto the center island in boxers and bare feet.

It's been a month since Sonia was confined, and nothing has really changed. Souda wonders who's waking up, and his mind wanders to Gundam, angrily, and he almost stops in case it actually is Gundam. But someone is still waking up, it's actually happening, this could be the beginning of something real.

When he arrives with Hinata in the center building, Fukawa is sitting slumped over in a chair in the corner while Togami sits on the arm of the chair, watching her almost protectively. When he sees Souda and Hinata he jumps away from her, regains his composure, and strides over to show them to the pods.

Everyone else is already there. They're all crowded in the back, and Souda's heart throbs, because it really _is_ Gundam that's waking up. That's just his luck. But when he heads to the back to join them, Gundam is lying still, and to his left, Komaeda's pod is open, and Hinata rushes to its side.

Komaeda's eyes are open, cloudy and grey, and they're darting everywhere, looking from face to face until they settle on Hinata. And they lock eyes for a while until, satisfied, Komaeda's flutter shut. And Hinata shouts his name loudly and suddenly everybody is moving, someone is propping Komaeda up and checking his breathing mask, and Souda stands there and does nothing, in shock.

Komaeda. It had to be Komaeda.

In blatant frustration, Souda barks out a laugh, startling everybody, and he angrily kicks the bottom of Gundam's pod. They're all silent.

* * *

Koizumi. Tsumiki. Ibuki. They all wake up, slowly at first, but then everyone rushes to their aid. Souda gets used to waking up in the middle of the night to alarms. After everything is settled and the person has been brought to the hospital for a medical assessment, he visits Sonia. She's never asleep, and never believes him when he tells her people are waking up. She always asks about Gundam, and usually, that's when he leaves.

But Gundam never wakes up.

And he gets so pissed about it, because he shouldn't care about the guy that drove Sonia crazy. But he does care, because he wants Gundam to wake up so Sonia will be back to normal. No matter who else wakes up it doesn't mean anything anymore, because no matter who wakes up Gundam is still asleep and Sonia is still crazy.

Even though Sonia is crazy and Gundam remains comatose, news leaks to the Future Foundation about the awakening students. Naegi and Kirigiri kept it a secret for a while, not wanting anyone to panic, but for a couple of days everything felt tense around the islands. But when word broke through that the Future Foundation ultimately considered the virtual reality a success.

Within only a few days Future Foundation employees are poured into the islands, spilling off of the boats and immediately rushing to get to work. Nurses and doctors are stationed in the hospital to care for the awakened. People are placed all over the main island, swarming about the first floor, spending days studying the technology. The final survivors of the School Life of Mutual Killing are brought to the islands, a bubbly girl named Asahina and a tall somewhat unkempt man named Hagakure. All six of the survivors set up office on the third floor of the building on the main island, as the heads of the newly named Despair Rehabilitation project, and they are the ultimate authority on everything concerning the 77th class of Hope's Peak Academy.

Souda can't go anywhere anymore without being followed or watched. What was once his safe haven down at the airport is now another scene for everyone to study, like he's some guinea pig stuffed into an oversized lab. He's hardly allowed to build anything anymore without being required to deconstruct it afterwards. He's looked at like a bomb ready to blow.

He finds time to keep to himself in his cottage. Hinata keeps coming by to try and drag him out of whatever funk he's gotten himself into, but eventually stops after the first several tries. Occasionally someone else comes in, like the ever cheery Asahina or the ever pessimistic Kuzuryuu. And it's all boring.

Until the day that Hinata bursts into his cottage, eyes wide, and says, "Gundam is waking up."

And then he hears the alarms go off.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: edited i think all of the little grammatical errors out that happens when you write a fic on your phone. this was an idea i'd had in my head for a while now, something between sonia and souda, just because i'm not as comfortable with their relationship as i am with sonia and gundams. of course, i would never write any situation between the three of them that i didn't believe was entirely possible, and while this one may be a little far-fetched, i definitely think it could happen (though perhaps canon Sonia is a bit more resilient than the one i've written here lmao). 
> 
> i will say that this isn't the first post sdr2 fic i'd considered writing, but i actually have no idea how to work out the other idea i have. maybe in time. as for now, it's back to my other fic!


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